The fact that Quicksand is a thriller easily boiled down to one brief sentence - an unhappily married couple get trapped in quicksand - means that there isn't much room for it to falter. A simple concept requires the best execution, otherwise you could end up with a dire final product. I'm not going to condemn Quicksand completely by calling it dire, but . . . it's not good.
Carolina Gaitan and Allan Hawco play Sofia and Josh, respectively. The two enjoy a hike through a rainforest in Colombia, but things take a turn when they get back to their car and find someone trying to steal their stuff. Fleeing the gun-toting criminal, they end up in quicksand. Will someone find and rescue them in time? Will the experience make their fragile marriage better or worse? And what can be done when a snake starts to become more and more curious about what it may view as helpless prey?
Quicksand feels like a debut feature from those involved, but it isn't. Director Andres Beltran may have a filmography largely made up of TV work and shorts, but he has already helmed a few other features (one, titled Llanto Maldito, that has a plot description similar enough to this one that it would seem he is drawn to the added tension of people trying to save their relationship while unusual events make their situation worse). It's the first film written by Matt Pitts, who looks to have worked his way up to a main writer position from an entry-level gig of being an assistant to J. J. Abrams, but the fact that he has already worked on some relatively big shows (Fringe, Zoo, Westworld) means he should have a better idea of how to construct an enjoyable and tense thriller. This end result shows that he doesn't, sadly, and Pitts might want to go back to non-writing duties for a while, spending more time as a student. It's not that his script is awful, and he tries to add enough to the film to give us more than just two people stuck in quicksand for an hour, but the characters aren't easy to care for, and there are one or two stupid decisions made that make the main premise more irritating than tense. Let's face it, the fact that Sofia wanders into the quicksand before Josh JUMPS IN to save/be with her doesn't set up the central premise as well as it should.
Gaitan is a decent lead. Hawco isn't. Sorry to him for being so blunt, as if he would ever stumble upon this review and think I was right to criticise his performance, but he's not helped by being given all of the worst moments and dialogue. His character seems to make the wrong choice whenever possible, with some of his weaknesses revealed in ways that are just laughable, and Hawco doesn't have the charisma or screen presence to overcome the material, whereas Gaitan does. A couple of other cast members are involved in scenes that allow viewers to move away from the quicksand for a while, but nobody does standout work.
Between them, Beltran and Pitts have made something that's just disappointingly flat and lacking any real tension. The simplicity of the premise could have worked well, but neither man makes the most of it, and neither seems to have real faith in the strength of the concept (hence the moments that cut away to a parallel story thread developing elsewhere). Much like the titular substance, this is something to avoid.
3/10
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